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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


Aethon

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3 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

That's not the kind of attitude that breeds success. That's the kind of attitude that breeds a failure every six launches.

Well of so then we just throw in a conspiracy to mix things up. How many private rocket companies other than ULA have had a run longer than 6 flights.

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1 hour ago, tater said:

Right, I'm a dupe of the conspiracy, building 7, etc. We all get exactly where you are coming from.

I have not said "You are a dupe of a conspiracy."

I have said "This basically unheard of error mode happening to a company with a proven record and who have demonstrated extremely good engineering and handling practices, and especially with their coming up major world-first milestones is highly unusual/straining SoD, and should at least be examined as a possibility due to the sheer number of factors that coming together that make it at least theoretically possible, with the hopes that it's some new form of failure mode that nobody could have anticipated."

 

Perhaps you should stop reading too much into it?

As for the reconstruction that is giving the current 'event at the fill valve' explaination circulating around, he took the initial frame of the blast and turned its opacity almost to zero and lined it up perfectly with a frame of the rocket from pre-detonation and it centers in on the fill valve as the center of the blast based upon the artifact rays of the blast flare in the image.

AmosDetOverlay_zpsskdk4hic.png

Edited by CptRichardson
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If you think there was human intent involved in what happened, my statement is 100% accurate. %$#@ happens, and they blew up a rocket as a result. It's not more complicated than that. I'm well aware of the internet sleuths. I'll trust people who have more data. They also seem to forget that the fill valve is also the path of least resistance for overpressure in the vessel itself by definition when it is being filled (it's a hole in the tank). All it would take was a breach, and a spark. It;s like a plane crash, it's rarely one cause, it's usually a constellation of causes (assuming it's not CFIG, though those often have multiple human causes).

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1 hour ago, CptRichardson said:

As for the reconstruction that is giving the current 'event at the fill valve' explaination circulating around, he took the initial frame of the blast and turned its opacity almost to zero and lined it up perfectly with a frame of the rocket from pre-detonation and it centers in on the fill valve as the center of the blast based upon the artifact rays of the blast flare in the image.

AmosDetOverlay_zpsskdk4hic.png

That's an interesting analysis technique. Simple, ideal for fixed cameras, and if you took multiple angles and viewed the whole video, it sounds like it would be a good place to start. That is, as long as the analysts have the right knowledge of explosion physics and the rocket's construction. Would something like this be done in official investigations? 

It sad to hear this news, more delays on rocket science. But looking for a bright side, better to find faults now, than with a more valuable cargo. 

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It's unfair.
As the burst happened in the second (i.e. unused) stage we again still don't know if the first stage is reflyable and KSP designs are relevant.

Would be interesting if somebody would combine both videos matching timeline and scale. (myself don't have video soft at my place).
I.e. if capsule launches a half-second after the tanke bursts.

Spoiler

 

 

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7 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

 

On a more positive note, Shortly after I read that I found this coub:

Dragon would be safe, I guess.

@kerbiloid 

14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

 

Would be interesting if somebody would combine both videos matching timeline and scale. (myself don't have video soft at my place).
I.e. if capsule launches a half-second after the tanke bursts.

 

 

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3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

That's not the kind of attitude that breeds success. That's the kind of attitude that breeds a failure every six launches.

No, it's called statistics. That's what risk assessment involves. "Attitude" is irrelevant.

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So, when the booster stays on ground, Dragon LES with T/W=6 is exactly enough to escape from the fireball.
Imagine, if it bursts when booster gives 4g, so effective acceleration of the capsule relative to the fairing is 1-2 g...

Here we can get that T/W of LES should be not 6, but 6+4 = 10 at least. (Usually 12..18)

Edited by kerbiloid
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2 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

I have said "This basically unheard of error mode happening to a company with a proven record and who have demonstrated extremely good engineering and handling practices, and especially with their coming up major world-first milestones is highly unusual/straining SoD, and should at least be examined as a possibility due to the sheer number of factors that coming together that make it at least theoretically possible, with the hopes that it's some new form of failure mode that nobody could have anticipated."

So you are claiming malicious intent, because SpaceX is so awesome it can't screw up ? That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard today.

Every design has its flaws. All procedures have loopholes. Everybody makes mistakes. Accidents happen. SpaceX is under a lot of pressure, and employees take the brunt of that pressure. They are notoriously overworked and underpaid. Their procedures and paperwork are leaner than the rest of the industry. It wouldn't be surprising if corners got cut somewhere down the line.

There are all sorts of things that could have caused the explosion, inside and outside the rocket. We simply don't have enough evidence yet, and unless there is some evidence found, malicious intent is way down on the list of probably causes.

 

 

 

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What happened today was that a vehicle containing over five hundred tons of liquid oxygen and kerosene, hundreds of kilos of hypergolic propellants, significant amounts of outright pyrophoric material, and wrapped in a thin film of flammable metal, exploded. That is not suspicious. That's the natural state of such an object. That's why space is hard.

Edited by Kryten
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56 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

As the burst happened in the second (i.e. unused) stage we again still don't know if the first stage is reflyable and KSP designs are relevant.

This was a fresh first stage that's never flown before. Even if it launched fine it would have made no statement about whether or not first stages are truly reflyable.

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Sorry for my probably lame question, but I just noticed a thing - there's some sort of flash (either artifact or something) before the fireball. Does it mean that something was "ignited" in before the explosion ? Or is it just a camera artifact ?

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There has been a bit of talk about "attitude", but people have been conflating our attitude with that of SpaceX. My attitude is "sh1t happens. Rockets explode. They were due one. <jeb>It was pretty!</jeb> Let's hope our favourite space company can deal with this without suffering excess financial loss, and no human fallout (ie redundancies) occurs." (Sacking(s) due to incompetence are another thing entirely.) After all, I am not in any way connected to SpaceX, I have no influence over their work practices, technical decisionmaking or corporate "attitude". I have the luxury of taking any attitude I please!

SpaceX and other parties involved in the investigation will take a very different attitude. They will be digging through all their hi-res footage and telemetry data and trying to pinpoint the causes of this accident, and will bend over backwards to make sure it doesn't happen again - their company depends on it, their jobs depend on it. Elon Musk is extremely rich but his pocket won't be infinitely deep, nor the pockets of other investors or banks he may tap to keep SpaceX afloat if they start to have too many accidents. Everybody in the company ought to be aware of this, and will do their best to avoid financial stability becoming an issue.

Noooo Falcon :'(

Is there any idea what caused it yet?

A good thing this happened before crew are being flown so they can fix a potential flaw before then.

Nope. All we know is something went boom. Some amateur video analysis places the observed centre of the boom close to one of the fuel filling ports, but we don't know if that is relevant. We await a potentially long and complex investigation.

Edited by softweir
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2 hours ago, softweir said:

Nope. All we know is something went boom. Some amateur video analysis places the observed centre of the boom close to one of the fuel filling ports, but we don't know if that is relevant. We await a potentially long and complex investigation.

Thats not true, it caused 5 or so folks here to just bubble over with strut speculation, conspiracy theories and other diatribe.  It must have been an intergalactic psychotacheon ray.

Edited by PB666
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15 minutes ago, Mitchz95 said:

Was the upper stage even supposed to do anything during the static test? It seems like the last thing you'd expect a problem from on the ground.

Whatever it may or may not have been supposed to do, I'm pretty sure it wasn't "blow up".

 

(From what I've read, they expected to just fuel it and then defuel it after the first stage engines were tested.)

Edited by mikegarrison
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1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Whatever it may or may not have been supposed to do, I'm pretty sure it wasn't "blow up".

In KSP blowing up is ALWAYS an option.

Edited by PB666
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